According to Venture Beat, HP tried to sell webOS and Palm, but couldn’t find a buyer willing to pay HP’s exorbitant asking price of $1.2 billion. HP apparently wanted to reduce its losses by selling Palm at the same price it paid for the company back in 2010.

This value might be reasonable if HP actually did something to improve the platform, but, sadly, the company failed to do anything significant with webOS. HP released the Pre 3 and the Veer, two lackluster handsets that failed to excite consumers. The Touchpad took the retail world by storm, but only after HP dropped the price of the tablet to a rock bottom $99. The Touchpad launched with a starting price tag of $499 for the 16 GB model and sales were stagnant.

The computer maker supposedly talked to Amazon, Samsung, Intel and even Facebook about buying webOS and Palm. All the potential buyers said no, including Facebook which supposedly laughed at the deal HP brought to the table. Venture Beat hints that HP not only asked for too much money, but further complicated things by requiring access to webOS so the company could use it on their printers.

Either HP is a terrible negotiator which is doubtful because it is the leading PC manufacturer and you don’t get to the top by making foolish deals. It’s more likely that HP want to hold on webOS and keep Palm’s patents in its coffers for a rainy day.

[Via Venture Beat] PC manufacturer and you don’t get to the top by making follish deals, or the company didn’t really want to sell webOS.